Beasley had just opened the front door, returning at noon from his
office, when Hamilton Swift, Junior's voice came piping from the
library, where he was reclining in his wagon by the window.

"Cousin David Beasley! Cousin David, come a-running!" he cried. "Come
a-running! The Hunchbergs are here!"

Of course Cousin David Beasley came a-running, and was immediately
introduced to the whole Hunchberg family, a ceremony which old Bob, who
was with the boy, had previously undergone with courtly grace.

"They like Bob," explained Hamilton. "Don't you, Mr. Hunchberg? Yes, he
says they do extremely!" (He used such words as "extremely" often;
indeed, as Dowden said, he talked "like a child in a book," which was
due, I dare say, to his English mother.) "And I'm sure," the boy went
on, "that all the family will admire Cousin David. Yes, Mr. Hunchberg
says, he thinks they will."

And then (as Bob told me) he went almost out of his head with joy when
Beasley offered Mr. Hunchberg a cigar and struck a match for him to
light it.

"But WHAR," exclaimed the old darky, "whar in de name o' de good Gawd do
de chile git dem NAMES? Hit lak to SKEER me!"

That was a subject often debated between Dowden and me: there was
nothing in Wainwright that could have suggested them, and it did not
seem probable he could have remembered them from over the water. In my
opinion they were the inventions of that busy and lonely little brain.